Hey friends.
Let’s talk about something we don’t often talk about directly: death. It seems macabre or taboo. It’s one of those things that hangs around the edges of our lives, a constant hum we try to tune out. We get so good at avoiding it, at pushing it away, that when it crashes into our world – the phone call, the diagnosis, the sudden absence – it can feel like a cosmic gut punch.
And in those moments, the questions come flooding in. What now? Where did they go? Is this… is this really it?
It’s okay to ask those questions. It’s okay to wrestle with them. In fact, I think it’s essential. Because honestly, a faith that doesn’t grapple with death, a faith that tries to bypass the very real pain and mystery of it all, isn’t really a faith at all. It’s just a nice idea, a comforting story we tell ourselves.
But Christianity, at its core, is about something much more disruptive, much more real than that. It’s about resurrection.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Resurrection? Scott, come on.” And I get it. It sounds… well, it sounds like a Sunday school answer (where the answer is always “Jesus”). But what if, just what if, it’s not just a tidy theological point? What if it’s the key to understanding everything?
Think about a seed. You plant it in the ground. It dies. It decomposes. It looks like it’s gone. Finished. But then, something incredible happens. A sprout emerges. New life. From what looked like death.
That’s the rhythm of the universe. Death and rebirth. Winter and spring. The ebb and flow of the tide. It’s woven into the fabric of everything. And it’s woven into us.
We’re so afraid of endings. We cling to what we know, to what’s familiar. But what if endings aren’t really endings at all? What if they’re transitions? Gateways? The edge of something beautiful we can’t even imagine? It’s beyond our current vision, beyond our current field of reality.
Jesus talked about this. He talked about losing your life to find it. He talked about a grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying so that it could bring forth much fruit. He wasn’t just talking about himself. He was talking about the fundamental nature of reality.
So, when we face death – our own or the death of someone we love – it’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to feel the pain. It’s okay to rage against the unfairness of it all. Grief is not the absence of faith. It’s the honest expression of love. It’s visceral, it’s raw, it’s the authentic expression of loss.
But even in the midst of that grief, we can hold onto this hope, this wild, audacious hope, that death is not the final word. (Thank God!) That what looks like the end is actually the beginning. That what seems lost is actually found, transformed, made new. We just can’t see it yet. It’s just beyond our reach. Beyond the “veil” – “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)
This isn’t about escaping the reality of death. It’s about facing it head-on, with courage and with hope. It’s about trusting that even in the darkest valley, even in the face of the ultimate unknown, there is still light. There is still life. There is still love. This should be encouraging to us all. We don’t have to fear this unknown variable, or be paralyzed by this interruption of life. It’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to tackle this topic with the assurance that God is still present and His sovereignty has authority over both life and what we call death. New life is resurrection…we are just on the edge of it peering into something we have yet to understand.
And that, my friends, is a story worth believing in.
Grace and Peace,
-Pastor Scott.
Pastor's Ponderings 